


The Space in Between Us

by kim47



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Episode Tag, Implied Relationships, M/M, implied wincestiel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-26
Updated: 2012-04-26
Packaged: 2017-11-04 08:43:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/391938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kim47/pseuds/kim47
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Sam can't sleep, Dean won't talk (but then he does), and hope, apparently, springs eternal. Coda to 7x17.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Space in Between Us

**Author's Note:**

> The summary probably makes this sound happier than it is. It's not, y'know, _dark_ , but it's a little angsty.

It’s not the worst place they’ve stayed in, it’s just another in an endless line of nondescript motel rooms, another place for them to stop on the endless fucking roadtrip their life has become. Sam slumps back against the door as he closes it, closing his eyes in gratitude at the silence surrounding him. It’s been too long since he’s been alone with his own thoughts.

He isn’t grateful for long; the silence is quivering with tension, Sam can see it thrumming in the set of Dean’s shoulders and the clench of his jaw. 

Sam heaves himself off the door, body aching, and drops his duffle somewhere in the vicinity of the sofa. He sits on the edge of the nearest bed and watches Dean shrug off his coat and unlace his boots, pointedly ignoring the way Sam is tracking his movements. He watches him remove the knife and his gun from his body, and slip out the second, silver knife he keeps in an ankle holster and stab it into the table beside the bed. 

The lighting in the room is just dim enough to be irritating, a harsh, dull fluorescence that makes Dean's skin pallid and throws every line and scar on his face and arms into sharp relief. Dean looks exhausted, stretched too thin, and Sam’s chest aches.

Dean’s still removing all the shit he carries from his pockets and body, he’s still ignoring Sam, and Sam needs to _do something_. They haven’t talked about this at all; fuck, they’ve barely talked, really, properly talked, in months. He thinks this warrants a conversation, even if nothing else has.

"Dean."

"Don't."

" _Dean_."

Dean is facing away from him, hands on his hips, and all Sam can really see is the tendon flexing in his neck, the way his throat works as he tries to keep himself under control. 

"Seriously Sam, if you don't shut up, I will shut you up."

Sam retreats into silence, and when it becomes clear that he's not going to say anything more, Dean stomps into the bathroom. He bangs around for a while, doing God knows what, then the shower starts and it runs and runs and runs, the soft rhythm of the spray filtering out into the room. 

Sam makes no move to get up, to change, to do anything. He raises a hand to rub at his eyes, trying to rid them of the dull image that’s been stuck there for hours now. It doesn’t work. 

Dean emerges at long last, and still Sam sits, waiting. Dean slips the knife under his pillow, as always, and then lies down on top of the covers. His only concession to the concept of pyjamas is that he's wearing older, softer jeans than normal, and just a t-shirt. His hair is damp, and Sam's eyes track the path of a drop of water as it slides down his temple and neck.

Sam is tired, in innumerable ways, but he knows he won't be able to sleep until they have this out. Until he gets Dean to acknowledge how utterly fucked up this situation is, to admit that he’s not okay.

Dean grunts, and reaches over to flick off the lights. They stay quietly in the darkness, neither speaking, the silence stretching thin between them. Sam has no idea how much time passes, and he’s starting to wonder if Dean’s fallen asleep when -

"We left him there."

Dean's voice is soft, flat. Sam would call it unemotional, but he knows his brother.

"We didn't have any choice," he says. The words are useless, empty. Sam _knows_ it's the truth; he doesn't know what else they could have done. It doesn't make him feel any better.

"Sammy, we _left_ him there. After what he did for us, for --"

Dean's voice breaks off harshly, and Sam can hear him take a deep, rattling breath. Two sentences. It took two sentences to shatter Dean's exterior, to have him breaking and gasping for air.

Sam thinks now that maybe they should have talked about this earlier. They'd never, not once, really _talked_ about what happened with Cas. At first it had been too raw, too close. And there was nothing, really, to say. Sam was seeing Lucifer (and he's still not used to his absence; he finds himself constantly glancing around himself, waiting for a wisecrack that never comes) and Cas was gone and that was it. 

Dean hasn't been _Dean_ , not really, since it happened. There have been brief moments when he's gotten a glimpse of his brother back, but he's always replaced with this tired, sad man Sam has no idea how to talk to. 

Sam has missed him fiercely. He's sometimes hated Cas for taking a little of Dean with him when he died. For depriving Sam of the two of them at once, for taking away _everything_ he’d grown to depend on. 

Sam slides off the bed and crosses to Dean's. He sits quietly on the edge of it, his hip just brushing Dean's thigh. Dean sits up and swings his legs off the bed, so they're sitting with their thighs pressed together. Dean’s body heat warms him, and Sam welcomes it, the tension in his muscles easing slightly.

Dean sighs.

"I can't believe we found him," he says, and scrubs a hand over his face. "He's _alive_ , Sam. Cas is _alive_." He sounds simultaneously awed and furious, unsure how to deal with the having such an unexpected and double-edged gift handed to him.

"Yeah," Sam breathes in reply. He hasn’t really had a chance to process that himself. Cas is alive. Jesus.

"I can't believe--" Dean's jaw tightens, and his hand curls into a fist. "We get him back and what? Lose him straight away? What the fuck's the point, Sam."

Sam learned, a long time ago, that railing against the unfairness of the world is a futile exercise. Doubly so for a Winchester. There is no point.

"I didn't think I could forgive him,” Dean says, the words spilling out of him, months worth of pent-up emotion finally finding an outlet. “For what he did to you. Fuck, I still don't know if I have. But what he did in there, taking your memories..."

Dean's voice is rough, ragged, so close to breaking. And God, Sam knows. He doesn't think he's going to be able to sleep for thinking about it. The agony he's experienced, the insanity at Lucifer's hands...the thought of Cas suffering through that, voluntarily, thinking he _deserves_ it... He can’t stop seeing Cas, small and out-of-place in the white scrubs, hunched over, terrified. He knows exactly what he must be going through, more than Dean will ever be able to, and the knowledge is a lead weight in his gut.

"Jesus, Sam, is there ever going to be anyone that I don't just fuck up completely?"

Sam closes his eyes against the sting. Dean blames himself for _everything_ , including the magnificent, incomparable ways in which Sam has utterly fucked up. It’s bizarre, given that Sam’s the one who’s been seeing the Devil, that Dean still has the more messed-up psyche of the two of them.

“Well there’s always me,” he says, aiming for light and missing by several hundred feet.

Dean snorts.

“Yeah, because I’ve always been such a fantastic thing for you. I dragged you back into this life, all those years ago. I knew you wanted out, didn’t want anything to do with it, but I still --”

"Hey, hey, shut the fuck up," Sam says instantly, turning so he's facing Dean. Dean's still looking at the floor and Sam knows that isn’t what this is about, it’s just one more way for Dean to beat himself up. He’s about to open his mouth to tell Dean to stop, when Dean goes on.

“Jesus, Sam, I fucked up an _Angel of the Lord_ ,” Dean says, with a kind of amazed incomprehension. “He was this perfect thing, a thing of _heaven_. He was a dick,” he adds with a snort, “but he was _holy_. Look at him now, look what I did to him. I fucked him over, completely.”

“I helped,” Sam interjects, and it at least gets a tiny smirk out of Dean. The sight makes miles of perfect skin, tangled limbs, and breathy promises flash in Sam’s memory for a moment. 

“I kissed him,” Dean says quietly, after a moment, as if he read Sam’s mind. Sam’s chest clenches, his mind flashing to the last time he’d seen that. Dean’s tongue curling lazily around Cas’s, as Sam jerked him off slowly, the three of them pressed close together on a motel bed not made to fit three grown men. He feels another burst of grief and anger in his chest, and he’s not sure how many more he can take. There’s never been a time that he, or Dean, have had something good that they were allowed to keep. It just doesn’t happen to them.

“What happened?” Sam prompts, when Dean shows no signs of going on. He’s not sure if he wants to know, if it will make things better or worse, but if Dean wants to talk about it, Sam’s not going to deny him that.

“After I gave him his coat. He said he remembered everything, and then I gave him the coat, and he promised me he’d fix it, he’d make it up to me, to us, and I just... He was babbling, and he was terrified, and I didn’t know what to do, or say.” Dean laughs, and it’s choked and bitter and the furthest thing from funny. “I just grabbed him, couldn’t stop myself. Fucking laid one on him. And he kissed back, you know? Guess he really did remember everything. Then he pushed me away, said he didn’t deserve it, he didn’t deserve _us_ , and next thing we were in your room.”

Dean still won't fucking look at him, so Sam grabs his chin and turns him forcefully. 

"We'll get him back, Dean. We'll fix this. We will." He pours all the certainty he doesn't feel into it, and it's worth it when Dean exhales and slumps forward. 

Sam catches his face in his hands, and gently swipes his thumbs over Dean's face. And fuck, his cheeks are wet.

"I'm sorry, Dean," he says helplessly.

"Yeah, me too, Sammy," Dean replies, and he does this weird kind of half-sniffle thing that absolutely fucking breaks Sam's heart.

He leans in without thinking, tipping Dean's face up to meet him. The kiss is soft, gentle, a light pull-and-catch of lips, but Dean returns it, just as softly. They haven't done this in a long time. God, it must have been nearly a year. 

It'd always been a thing the three of them had done together, him, Dean, and Cas. They fit so well together, filling in each other's empty spaces. Sam can hardly remember how it started, except that it had, and those had been the only times, in the middle of the apocalypse and a fucking civil war in heaven, when it felt like maybe things would be okay. Whatever else they had to do, whatever else was fucking them over, breaking them apart, it was always _something_ to hold on to.

And then Cas went a little crazy and Sam’s wall started crumbling and everything had gone, almost literally, to hell. Sam still thinks about it often, in the dark and quiet, when he hears Dean mumbling Cas’s name in his sleep, hears him breathing Sam’s own along with it. He remembers the warmth and the pleasure and the stillness and misses it so badly it’s a physical ache in his stomach.

They’ve never done this, not just the two of them. But he thinks they need it, he knows they do, so Sam presses closer, licking into Dean's mouth, sliding his hand around the back of Dean's neck to pull him in. Dean hiccoughs against his lips, and his cheeks are still damp, but he follows Sam's lead, tongue sliding against Sam's, pulling Sam down on top of him.

It's a little weird, and at first all Sam can feel is the empty space where Cas isn't, and he knows Dean is feeling it too. But he craves this, craves the comfort of closeness that's been missing between them for so long. 

But it's also wonderful, feeling Dean's skin under his hands, tugging Dean's jeans down and wrapping his hand around him. The way Dean bites his lip and closes his eyes, his hands gripping Sam's shoulders tight enough to leave marks. The way he breathes _Sam_ into his mouth when he comes. And if Sam misses the feeling of Cas’s mouth on his shoulder, of Dean’s and Cas’s joined fingers wrapped around him, he figures this is the next best thing. 

Afterwards, they lie side-by-side. The bed is too small for the both of them, but Sam doesn't move and Dean doesn't ask him to. He runs his hand over Dean's arm, feeling the jittering of his muscles in the come-down of adrenaline, and possibly something less easily defined. 

Dean’s asleep within minutes, and even though Sam hasn’t had a proper night’s rest in months, he lies awake for a long time. He watches Dean, takes in the slack lines of his body, the way his forehead’s still wrinkled, clearly not untroubled even in sleep. But Dean looks softer and younger than he has in a long time, and he’s breathing deeply and slowly, and Sam feels a tiny flare of hope that maybe things can get better.

"We'll get him back, Dean," he whispers. And somehow, this time, he believes it.


End file.
